A visitor from time greets Niu, a rather unintelligent
and obscenely rich young girl. The visitor educates her about hyperspace
leaps, in which, unfortunately, Niu promptly disbelieves.

Niu was the most unusual girl that anyone had ever
met. Unlike most of the students at Ropip Dragon High
School, Niu always walked around unshod, unprepared, and
uninterested about school. This resulted in sore feet, a low
grade point average, and a slight forlorn look on her face.
She always thought school was a waste of time, especially
when teachers gave students free time to do their homework.
Niu had a philosophy that if one did not work laboriously in
class, then that class was a waste of time. Those classes
were more of a waste of time when students whipped out their
iPods and danced to the announcement promo videos. Niu
however, did not carry an iPod. She always thought those
were detrimental to ultrasound-hearing capabilities, and she
detested anyone who jangled along with his or her iPod.
Daily, Niu would harbor feelings of nostalgia for those old
days when iPods had not been invented yet. Unfortunately,
the amount of
people without iPods was dwindling, and it was ineluctable
that one day everyone would have one – and Niu would hate
them all!

One particularly gloomy day, Niu was pondering about
the recent outbreak of UFO sightings, and what effect those
sightings had on her ability to make tortillas. For Niu was
an avid maize-planter, and she never wasted a moment to
water and delightfully complement her beautiful maize seeds. The
week before, an assessor came and inspected Niu’s land,
jubilantly declaring that Niu’s soil was the best in the
country. The assessor promptly awarded Niu with a bag of
nuts and a pat on the back. Niu’s confidence on her skills
as a maize was resurgent; she gradually began becoming more
egoistic as she awed at her amazing growing skills. As she
wiped her drool and shook herself out from her reverie, Niu
rubbed her eyes and stood up. Far beyond the horizon, a
faint blur could be detected, sometimes rippling, and other
times disappearing completely out of view. The blur came
closer, faster than the speed of light. Niu was
transfixed with terror; were those the UFOs that people have
been sighting recently? Tremulous, Niu uncertainly picked up
her watering tin and fled back into her castle. Her flight
from the supposed-UFO seriously affected her; Niu could
hardly breathe, let alone keep her head up. Finally, her
eyelids began to flag, then gradually closed as her mouth
made a disturbing snoring sound.

She awoke to a sudden crash outside the boiler room.
Grabbing her socks (for she wore no shoes), Niu dashed madly
out to the entrance of her castle garden. The entire front
area was desolate; not a single thing visible was living,
because everything had died, as if from a radioactive
poisoning from a deuterium bomb. At the corner of the
castle gate, Niu spotted a small habitation, small enough
that a skinny squirrel might have trouble living in. Furious,
she stomped over to the apparent entrance of the habitation.

With
a great show of emotion and frustration, Niu put her hands
on her hips and declared loudly, “You squatter, what are
you doing living on my castle ground without my permission?
I’ll have you beheaded and sent to the Royal Prison
immediately!”

There
was a distortion of the air, and a large figure appeared. It
was a man, about the age of 340, with a distinct ragged old
cloak. “Why young lady,” he said, “what is all the
ruckus about? I was just enjoying my daily hyperspace leap.”

“Hyperspace
leap?! HYPERSPACE leap? What are you talking about old man?”
Niu shouted. “You are on MY land without MY permission!
Why don’t you enjoy your HYPERSPACE leap somewhere else? Like
in a public restroom?”

“Oh
calm down dear lady! I did not mean to settle on your land
without your permission. I am merely here to inform you
about my mission to educate the world about the fourth
dimension.”

Niu
collapsed, rolling on the ground laughing. “Fourth
dimension! Ahaha! You must be going nuts old man! There IS
no fourth dimension!”

The
man shook his head impatiently. “Young lady, if you do not
calm your composure and listen to me, then I’m afraid I
might have to punish you.”

“What
can YOU do, old man? Blink at me?”

“Why,
what insolence you are showing. I might have to resort to
old-fashioned spanking.”

Niu
couldn’t take it any longer. She began having a fit as the
laughs came out before she could breathe. The old man
couldn’t take it any longer. He picked Niu up by her
stockings, and began spanking her.

Sensing
that the man was telling the truth, and wasn’t going to
stop spanking, Niu cried out, “All right old man, I will
listen to you, if only you would stop spanking me!” The
man smiled triumphantly, and began rummaging around for his
briefcase.

Finally
locating it, the man, whose name was Dictionary, made an
important cough and ruffled his papers. “Now listen to me.
You, a girl of the third dimension, might find the fourth
dimension an impossibility, a crazy idea made up by an old
man. Well I am here to tell you the truth. There is a
fourth dimension, and I come from it.”

Niu
(for she was very smart and already had an Ph.D in
cosmology) scoffed and dismissed
Dictionary with a wave of her hand. “I’ve read about
this fourth dimension, some dead guy named Pinkowski thought
of this idea. Who cares? He’s dead anyway.”

The
old man was disappointed, for he was sure that this
intelligent but brash young woman would understand. He could
only travel down to the third dimension once every 100
years, and was sure that this time his efforts would not be
in vain. He sighed, and began again: “Look here lady.
Imagine that you could travel from your castle to your
school in less than a nanosecond. It is simple if you think
about the fourth dimension, time. If you could travel
forward in space, your length, width, and height, then you
could also travel backwards in time, hence lessening the
time it takes to travel to your school.”

Niu
rolled her eyes and grumbled, “Yeah old man, I learned
that in preschool. Can you just leave my castle, or do you
want me to call my palace guards?”

Dictionary
insufflated, and with a show of hands, gave up. “If you
don’t believe me, then I will show you.” He straightened
his cloak, and jumped. Niu gasped in awe as the man
disappeared from her view, only to appear on top of the
castle gate.

The
old man, who did not have an iPod and had not lost his
ultrasonic-hearing abilities, heard the gasp and smiled. He
finally made a breakthrough. Perhaps he could retire now and
enjoy a nice vacation in Betelgeuse. Dictionary straightened
his cloak again, and appeared in front of Niu. “Now do you
believe me? Or do you still need proof?”

Niu
smiled an all-knowing smile. “Oh, I have enough proof,
thanks. Would you be so kind as to sit there on my 24-karat
gold garden bench while I ready my camera? I want to
commemorate this visit from such a distinguished guest.”

The
old man blushed, and adjusted his cloak tie supremely,
ignorant of the weapon Niu hid in her socks. Niu took out
the graphing calculator, and bonked Dictionary on the head.
He died upon impact.

Those
who do not want to accept the truth do all they can to deny
it. Or get rid of it.